WORLD BRIEFS

CHINA: Oil spill after explosion spreading

China's largest reported oil spill emptied beaches along the Yellow Sea as its size doubled Wednesday, while cleanup efforts included straw mats and frazzled workers with little more than rubber gloves. An official warned the spill posed a severe threat to sea life and water quality as the environmental crisis spread off the shores of Dalian, once named China's most livable city. One cleanup worker has drowned, his body coated in crude. The oil had spread over 165 square miles of water five days since a pipeline at the busy northeastern port exploded, hurting oil shipments to the rest of the country.

SOMALIA: Peacekeepers' role in deaths

African Union peacekeepers are indiscriminately shelling residential areas of Mogadishu, Somalia's capital, according to internal AU reports reviewed by The Associated Press. The evaluation was made months before Somali militants claimed they carried out twin bombings that killed 76 people in Uganda last week, attacks the insurgents said were to avenge civilian deaths caused by AU soldiers. Civilians have suffered through nearly two decades of violent chaos in Mogadishu since the country's government was overthrown in 1991. Al-Qaida-linked al-Shabab militants now control large portions of the capital, and much of the country's southern and central regions. The AU force, known as AMISOM, has long been criticized by human rights groups for civilian deaths in Somalia, and the internal reports seen by AP show the mission itself is aware of the problem.

ROMANIA: DNA taken from Ceausescu

The mystery of where former dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife Elena were buried moved closer to resolution Wednesday after forensic scientists dug up their graves in a hunt for DNA. Ceausescu ruled Romania for 25 years with an iron fist before being ousted and executed in the 1989 anti-communist revolt in which more than 1,000 people were killed. Many Romanians doubted for years that the Ceausescus were really buried in the Ghencea military cemetery in west Bucharest. Pathologists and cemetery officials hoisted the wood coffins out of their graves, took DNA samples from the corpses, then reburied the coffins.